The Sea Monkey Experience
About the Experience
It began with a simple gesture: placing a small tank of Sea Monkeys on my office desk. In a space typically associated with institutional seriousness, the Sea Monkeys introduced whimsy, vulnerability, and smallness. Visitors were invited to respond with a single anonymous word describing how the Sea Monkeys made them feel.
Then, emotion is translated into movement as language becomes choreography.
About the Series
For one year of my life (June 2025-May 2026), every time I boarded a flight, I recorded the safety announcement on my phone. The ritual was always familiar: the cadence of the instructions, the hum of the cabin, the strange intimacy of language designed to be heard and forgotten.
Those recordings become source material. Speech, engine noise, cabin atmosphere, and interruption were cut, layered, and shaped into short tracks tied to specific flights.
One phrase always returned: full upright and locked position. Over time it has become a refrain, a marker, almost an obsession.
About the Work
Courtney Crappell (b. 1977)
Chromalume No. 8, 2025
Interactive light installation with Raspberry Pi, MIDI controller, LED panels, and audio
The Short Version: Play some black keys to start making art.
The Long Version: Chromalume No. 8 is an interactive sonic painting, one composed of pitch, time, and light. This is not a painting to be merely observed; it is one that should become a personal experience, and so in its idle phase, Chromalume No. 8 encourages the viewer to become the artist by wearing the headphones and pressing a key.
For the viewer/artist, Chromalume No. 8 becomes a musical and visual conversation, shaped in real time by the performer's harmonic choices. At the core of the piece lies a musical key: G-flat major. Notes that "belong" to this key appear as soft, saturated starbursts, gently populating the canvas. In contrast, tones from outside the key yield more dramatic effects that add friction, intensity, or surprise. When dissonance gives way to consonance, the display responds in kind, offering visual release. In this way, the composition of color and light mirrors the musical experience: harmony and contrast, arrival and departure.
Chromalume No. 8 explores how the structure of music can create visual meaning, and how the language of tonality can be extended beyond the ear into the eye and the imagination.
N.B.: more red . . . more blue . . . more beer . . . more light!
About the Work
“Kin”esthesia (Courtney & Annabelle Crappell)
The World's Heartstrings, 2026
Interactive sculptural installation with painted surface and tuned chime elements
The World Plays Kansas City is an invitation to listen with your hands, your eyes, and your sense of connection to places far beyond where you stand. Shaped as a world map wrapped around a heart, the piece traces a single continuous line across continents, linking cities through melody rather than distance. At each stop—from Kansas City to Japan—the line opens into a fragment of song, a familiar tune carrying the voice of its culture into a shared space. Inside the heart, those melodies become playable, transformed into chime pipes that invite anyone passing by to step in and bring the world to life through sound.
This is not a composition with a fixed beginning or end; it is a living score that depends on participation, chance, and curiosity. As notes overlap and rhythms collide, visitors create fleeting harmonies that echo the way cultures meet, blend, and evolve. The work celebrates Kansas City not just as a geographic point, but as a gathering place—especially in a moment when the city welcomes the world through the 2026 World Cup. Music becomes the common language, the connective thread, the shared pulse.
In this space, the boundaries between listener and performer dissolve, and the act of play becomes an act of belonging. The world doesn't just arrive in Kansas City—it resonates here, waiting to be heard, one note at a time.
About the Experience
It began with a simple gesture: placing a small tank of Sea Monkeys on my office desk. In a space typically associated with institutional seriousness, the Sea Monkeys introduced whimsy, vulnerability, and smallness. Visitors were invited to respond with a single anonymous word describing how the Sea Monkeys made them feel.
Then, emotion is translated into movement as language becomes choreography.